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What’s new in Development- How could informed policy-making contribute to an effective reduction of charcoal production? Charcoal industry is one of the largest in Malawi. Among its four largest urban areas, the volume of charcoal consumed represents one-third ...P. Kambewa; B. Mataya; K. Sichinga; T. Johnson
- Integrating Protected Areas into Climate PlanningThough protected areas have grown considerably over the last 130 years, there has been a recent decline in the growth of new protected areas and problems ...J. Ervin
- Raising Climate Finance to Support Developing Country Action: Some Economic ConsiderationsThis article explores the principles that should guide efforts to raise finance for climate action in developing countries. It explains that: (1) there ...A. Bowen
- Climate Change Justice: Getting Motivated in the Last Chance SaloonA key reason for pessimism with respect to greenhouse gas emissions reduction relates to the 'motivation problem', whereby those who could make the biggest ...C. McKinnon
- The impacts of and efforts to address climate change in the fragile ecosystem of SundarbansThe eco-region of Sundarbans is unique and fragile because it is one of the most extensive mangrove forests in the world. This report describes the Sundarbans ...A. Danda
- How could informed policy-making contribute to an effective reduction of charcoal production?
- Aid Watch
- Aid Watch blog ends; New work on development beginsToday, after two years and four months, we end the experiment that was the Aid Watch blog.We think the experiment was a success. We’ve had a great time blogging here. Thank you all for reading and writing back, and to our wonderful guest bloggers, for helping to make Aid Watch a source for way-outside-the-Beltway commentary on aid. Your response continues to […]William Easterly and Laura Freschi
- From Hell to ProsperityA graphic showing striking disparities income among religions in America, from the NYT Magazine:Bill switched from childhood Methodist to adult Episcopalian in an attempt to boost income. Did that likely work?Barro and McCleary 2006 argue the relationship goes from income to religiosity (as measured by church attendance, personal prayer, and belief in hell a […]William Easterly and Laura Freschi
- Poverty: Is there an app for that?by Tate Watkins. Tate is a research associate at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center.Last week the World Bank issued a announced an upcoming event called Random Hacks of Kindness. Tech developers will gather at locations around the world to try to “create open solutions that can save lives and alleviate suffering.” Random Hacks of Kindness began in 200 […]Guest Blogger
- Who should be the next IMF chief?Even if the serious charges against IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn are proven false, the IMF will likely be in need of a new leader.According to unwritten agreement, the IMF has always been headed by a European, just as the president of the World Bank has always been American.Some (mainly Europeans, funnily enough) argue that the IMF needs a European leader […]Laura Freschi
- Development Social Science in medical journals: diagnosis is caveat emptorAid Watch has complained before about shaky social science analysis or shaky numbers published in medical journals, which were then featured in major news stories. We questioned creative data on stillbirths, a study on health aid, and another on maternal mortality.Just this week, yet another medical journal article got headlines for giving us the number of w […]William Easterly and Laura Freschi
- Economics professors’ favorite economics professorsFrom a newly published article here.Before anyone on this list gets too much of a swollen head, note that everyone after the top 4 got between 5 and 10 votes out of 299 professors surveyed (there was another group at 4 votes, including a certain J. S*chs). There also seems to be a sheer name recognition effect over-representing economists that show up in the […]William Easterly
- Are Lax US Gun Laws Spilling Violence into Mexico?The question:Do more guns cause more violence?The experiment:We exploit a natural experiment induced by the 2004 expiration of the U.S. federal assault weapons ban to examine how the subsequent exogenous increase in gun supply affected violence in Mexico. The expiration relaxed the permissiveness of gun sales in border states such as Texas and Arizona, but n […]Laura Freschi
- Best and Worst of Official Aid 2011- new releaseBy Claudia Williamson, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Development Research InstituteRhetoric on “aid effectiveness” keeps escalating, is there anything to show for it?The past (almost) two years, Bill and I have been collecting data, combing through that data, and refining the numbers to ‘grade’ aid agencies and assess overall trends in aid practices. We waited until […]Guest Blogger
- World Bank mustn’t say “democracy,” but “deploy troops” is OKUPDATE: Wed, May 11: World Bank media chief David Theis responds (see end of comments section below)I finally read the World Bank’s 2011 World Development Report, Conflict, Security, and Development. It shed new light on an earlier discussion I had by email with World Bank Media Chief David Theis last month, which I reproduce here, and then I add a new […]William Easterly
- Saving Private HayekUPDATE: 3:30pm links to other reviews (all great) of the Fukuyama review at end of this postF.A. Hayek continues to be the most mis-characterized economist of all time. As if Glenn Beck were not doing enough damage, now even someone I greatly respect — Frank Fukuyama– has gotten Hayek wrong yet again. In a review of a new edition of the Constitu […]William Easterly
- Aid Watch blog ends; New work on development begins
- Aid and Debt
- Activity-based financial flows in UN system: a study of select UN organisations. Volume 2 - Case StudiesThis study, carried out by IDC SA on behalf of Evaluation Department, Norad, reviewed publicly available information on financial flows and financial ...
- Activity based financial flows in UN System: a study of select UN organisations. Volume 1 - SynthesisThis study, carried out by IDC SA on behalf of Evaluation Department, Norad, reviewed publicly available information on financial flows and financial ...
- Assessing the impact of transparency and accountability initiativesTransparency of budget process has, in the last two decades, become one of the pillars of good governance. However, have budget-related transparency ...
- Developing governance: challenges and progressSince emerging as a new donor enthusiasm in the 1990s, governance support has become a major area of aid to developing countries. The idea that remedying ...
- Strengthening the 2004 Tsunami-affected population's resilience to future disastersThis review report from the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) examines whether its vision of a more long-lasting impact had been achieved in terms of ...
- Activity-based financial flows in UN system: a study of select UN organisations. Volume 2 - Case Studies
- U4 Anticorruption
- Corruption in PakistanThis U4 expert answer from 2004 looks at what are the key sectors affected by corruption in Pakistan and diagnostic material, as well as reform initiatives
- Fondo anti-corrupcion en NicaraguaEste documento analiza los logros y los fallos del Fondo Anti-Corrupción (FAC), un programa de la cooperación internacional en Nicaragua, liderado por Noruega en implementación en sociedad con el gobierno nacional. El FAC, ejecutado desde el año 2002, ha tenido objetivos ambiciosos: disminuir la corrupción y promover la integridad y la transparencia en el se […]
- The accumulation of unexplained wealth by public officials: Making the offence of illicit enrichment enforceableRecent high-profile cases have focused attention on the transfer of assets abroad by heads of state and other senior officials from developing countries in amounts that far exceed their legitimate sources of income. Article 20 of the United Nations Convention against Corruption, criminalizing illicit enrichment, was drafted to address this issue. However, ve […]
- Monitoring public institutions’ integrity plansMonitoring integrity requires a conceptual framework that defines integrity as well as set clear objectives, targets and SMART performance indicators by which progress can be measured. The OECD has developed a comprehensive integrity assessment framework, which aims at: 1) collecting valid and reliable data on the existence and functioning of the key instrum […]
- Sequencing of Law Enforcement Interventions to Combat CorruptionDonor-supported approaches to address corruption have tended to focus on measures that support effective law enforcement in a country that are strategically sequenced. In many cases, independent oversight bodies and mechanisms, including anti-corruption commissions (ACCs), have formed a key part of the changes. ACCs have been seen as important actors in ensu […]
- Corruption in Pakistan
- PRS Watch
- (Français) Le temps est venu d’un nouveau consensus: Réguler les flux financiers pour parvenir à la stabilité et au développement...Au cours des siècles derniers, le monde a oscillé entre mondialisation et démondialisation de la finance avec, pour conséquence, des résultats radicalement différents. Un historique à long terme nous montre que le système actuel de liberté relative dont jouissent les flux … →
- (Español) Ha llegado la hora de un nuevo consenso: Regular los flujos financieros para la estabilidad y el desarrollo...Bretton Woods Project , miembro de Eurodad ha publicado un informe sobre regulacion de flojos financieros para la estabilidad y el desarrollo. Durante los últimos siglos, el mundo ha fluctuado entre la globalización y la desglobalización de las finanzas con resultados … →
- Member states should demand more transparency not less
- PRESS RELEASE: Appointment of next World Bank head: Campaigners demand fair selection process... Joint media statement Reacting to the announcement that Robert Zoellick is stepping down as World Bank President, a global coalition of campaigners has called for an open and merit-based process to elect the next World Bank leader, and for … →
- World Bank President appointment: Choose the best candidate...As Robert Zoellick announced that he is stepping down as World Bank President on 30 June, a global coalition of campaigners issued an open letter to World Bank governors calling for an open and merit-based process to elect the next … →
- (Français) Le temps est venu d’un nouveau consensus: Réguler les flux financiers pour parvenir à la stabilité et au développement
- WB impactevaluations blog
- Give a man a fish and feed him for life? Experimental evidence on the long-term effects of grants on Sri Lankan Microenterprises
- What do people mean when they talk about “transactional sex”?
- Tools of the Trade: Beyond mean decompositions (with an application to the gender wage gap in China)
- Borrowing with blinders on?
- What are we learning from better measurement?
- Friday links: More cash less STIs, more advice on grants, the difficulties of microenterprise growth and more...
- When it comes to female education, have we gotten it all backwards?
- Are the Danes the happiest people in the world? Using vignettes to anchor subjective responses
- When women are in charge
- Tips for writing Impact Evaluation Grant Proposals
